Snapshots
by Ballades
Summary: Vignettes.  Short moments in the life of one Mitsui Hisashi, set during and after the manga.
1. Intro

Polished wooden floors. The acrid tang of rubber. Orange bumps shading away to curves and the most perfect shape known to man. And that sound, the swish and thunk of the net slapping the ball, the sound that could wake him out of a sound sleep. This was what he was. This was his core.

He never could stay away for long. Like breathing, it was intrinsic to him. The rhythm of shooting; the tempo of a casual dribble; it was in his blood, like a heartbeat, sustaining him, giving him focus. He didn't know why he had survived those dark, soulless two years without that certain pulse racing through his body. He knew how, though. He knew how.

Anger was at the center of it, anger at himself for being utterly foolish and impatient. It took Mitsui a few more years to come to terms with his own skeletons in the closet, but eventually he had found closure. To get there, however, took time, effort, and countless talks with Coach Anzai to sort things through. Mitsui understood now that he hadn't forgiven himself for abandoning the sport he loved. His guilt and shame had manifested itself in a series of black moods, each lasting longer than the previous. During these times he would punish himself, sleeping little and eating less, ignoring everything but the ball and the net and his training. This of course spiraled out of control: his ability to play suffered, he trained more to take up the slack, and then his body failed him, bringing him around full circle. His temper was also liable to explode in the most spectacular of ways. And it did, too often. Coach Anzai had to be called in before he drove the people around him insane.

All of this was present in his mind every time he touched a basketball. The compounded feelings of years flashed through his head as he played, giving a whole new depth to the game. He thought it had been personal before, but oh, was it personal now. Mitsui still played because he enjoyed it, but it was more than just fun. Basketball was release, the most profound catharsis he had ever experienced, the pinnacle of his joy, and the absolute hell of his frustration. Basketball was therapy as practiced by Coach Anzai. Mitsui remembered afternoons spent shooting baskets together - the old man had taken his heart attack seriously and lost a good deal of weight - just letting the body ease into a routine so that he could free his mind and his demons.

So here he was at the gym again, those wooden floors stretching away in all directions, orange bumps beneath his fingertips, hands holding the locus of his self gently. He sighed, rolled his shoulders, released the ball with his left and pushed down with his right. A flick of the wrist; a bounce; a return. His arm came up, elbow bent slightly. Another push, another flick. Establish the rhythm, set it in the body. Relax.

He looked up and sighted. An easy push of his legs had him airborne. The ball sailed in that graceful, lazy, dangerous parabola and swished into the net. He felt himself smile.

Of course he knew why he came.

By reverse dribbles, Mitsui was already brooding.

He was good at it. He'd had lots of time to practice over the years; he'd perfected it, had it down to a science. He was now possessed of the kind of power Rukawa had with sleep; that is to say, he could brood anywhere, doing anything. But this was his kind of introspection, a masochistic self-examination that would leave his issues resolved only through pure sweat. People had always thought Rukawa was the brooder. Not true. Mitsui doubted if he had any other pressing matters to think about other than when he could get his next basketball fix.

Scowling, he rushed at the first chair set up on the court. To him they were defenders, guards or forwards or what-have-you crouched low, arms at their sides. He pivoted smoothly around, ball handling tight and precise. He wasn't a shooting guard for nothing, despite whatever that damn Miyagi had said. Any position on the court was fine, but the years with Coach Anzai had made the role of shooting guard expressly his. He faked quickly to the side, switched his weight from foot to foot and back again, dashed forward and delivered a fadeaway. The swish was crisp and clean.

He followed the ball's trajectory with his eyes, and when it bounced back up, he realized there was a figure beneath the backboard, watching him. It bent to retrieve the ball, and, wordless, tossed it back. Mitsui caught the glitter of blue eyes in the shadows and smirked, already walking to the half-court line, shoving chairs out of the way. One-two the bounces went, and he was off like a shot, pressing the advantage.

It was funny how things came full circle, funny how things balanced out. Like the simple action of the dribble, for example, the hand pushing the ball pushing the hand. Like how, inexplicably, through circumstances beyond his control, it was Rukawa, not Akagi, not Kogure, who was here. Rukawa, who was playing defense like a madman, who was one of his closest friends now, filling a void that was at best still raw.

The ball rebounded from the rim, and Mitsui cursed. Rukawa caught it and brought it back to half-court, then began his attack. Mitsui was suddenly reminded of the first time he had ever been challenged by the young upstart, how he'd cheated a bit in order to win. This situation was the same, picture-perfect the same, and not for the first time Mitsui felt some dejà-vu, as if he were reliving parts of his life through snapshots. See, he was guarding Rukawa with the same technique now as he had then, only this time it was harder to get through. And see, the sneaky bastard had floated an underhand layup into the net, just like before.

Mitsui went back to the half-court line to receive the ball. He advanced slowly, concentrating on keeping the rhythm even. Without warning, he jumped, sighted, released. The ball arced through the air and plopped into the net as he made a fist.

His eyes met Rukawa's, and Mitsui grinned cheekily, tapping his foot on the floor, showing the other man just how far away from the line he was. Picture-perfect the same, indeed.

Well, no. Not quite picture-perfect the same.


	2. Hail Mary

_Do you believe in love at first sight?_

Such a clichéd question, but Mitsui was dumbstruck the first time he saw it. It was orange. It was fuzzy. And it was so damned cute.

He remembered the first time he'd experienced this feeling. It was over something similarly orange, but not nearly as fuzzy nor cute. He was six, and he'd never seen professional basketball before. Mitsui was an active child, but nothing could captivate him the way basketball did. For the first time, he sat still for two hours and watched the game, entranced, his mind working to grasp the rules, trying to understand the dynamics of the sport. He'd cried when his parents finally turned off the TV, shooed him off to bed. The next day, Mitsui received his first ever full-size poster, a snapshot of Magic Johnson in mid-air, blown to immense proportions. The day after that, he got his first basketball.

And now, he was going to get his first cat.

"What are you going to name her?" the woman asked as he handed over the cash for the adoption fee. Kogure gaped at his uncharacteristic spending as Mitsui hefted the kitten in one hand and cradled it against his body. The little thing shimmied out of his grasp, clawed her way up his shoulder (Mitsui gritted his teeth; no one had ever told him kitten claws were like needles) and finally tucked her head into the crook of his neck. He melted, just a little.

_Do you believe in love at first sight?_

_Yes. Yes, I do._

"Hail Mary," he said simply, and turned away, leaving Kogure to carry the bags of supplies.*

* * *

><p>* A Hail Mary is a shot attempt thrown last-second, usually at the end of a half, from beyond the 3-point line. Usually it doesn't go in, but there have been a few instances where it has. Otherwise known as a type of buzzer beater.<p> 


	3. Turnovers

It was the little things, like the new flooring in the gym, or how the ball rack had been moved, that reminded Mitsui of how things had changed. Little things, like how Miyagi wore a gold band on his finger, how much more frail Coach Anzai seemed to be, that told him how different things were.

"I wish Kogure could be here," Ayako murmured to him as they jostled for position within the confines of the camera lens. The last picture of the night had to be a group picture so that Coach Anzai could have one final keepsake of his career, but how could it be a group when there was one missing?

It was the little things, like one less place setting, or the lack of glasses jokes, that made Mitsui wish that things were still the same.


	4. Rhythm

Rhythm.

Rhythm.

Such a simple word, that, yet so important to the daily ins-and-outs of life. There was rhythm in the body in the form of the heart. There was rhythm in birdsong, in the earth turning, in phones ringing, in the tiniest and largest of things. There was rhythm in life itself, a constantly driving momentum that kept all creatures moving.

So why was it so hard for him to find his rhythm?

Scattered basketballs and drops of sweat marked where Mitsui had unsuccessfully tried to regain his beat. He felt like the music class laggard who was always clapping after everyone else. Frustrated, he leaned his hands on his knees, mouth slack after one hundred shots mostly missed. This was supposed to come naturally to him, standing behind a thick white line, dropping bullseyes from twenty feet away. But he had been gone for two years, and his body had fallen out of tune.

Mitsui gathered the few balls that were nearby and set them back into the crate, then dragged it to the top of the arc. It was the point farthest away from the basket, but at least it was directly in front of him. He took up a ball and launched his first shot, grimacing even before the ball had left his hands, knowing it wouldn't go in. It had felt too out of sync. There were a million things wrong with his jump, his release, his form.

One thing at a time, then. Mitsui picked up the next ball and focused on his jump, bending his knees, pushing off the wooden floor. One thing at a time, and the more he practiced, the more he set the kinesthetics into his body, the closer he would be to recovering that magical rhythm, the eerie precognition that told him before he made the shot that he would make it.

Rhythm.

Another one hundred shots.

Rhythm.

Maybe he'd find it tomorrow.


End file.
